Savage

by Thomas E. Sniegoski

  She stripped off her bloody rubber gloves, dropping them on the floor as she left the operating room. She went to her desk and reached for the phone, hearing nothing when she picked it up.

  What was she doing? She knew the phones were down. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and checked it, holding it aloft just to be sure. Still no signal.

  Doc Martin ran through a mental list of people she should try to talk with, deciding to start with Charlotte Gaeta, the town manager. She grabbed her car keys from the top drawer of her desk and moved to the back door. A powerful gust of warm, moisture-saturated wind rushed in to greet her as she opened the door and stepped out into the parking lot.

  “Shit,” Doc Martin said, lowering her face to the wicked breeze that spattered her glasses with water. The door closed behind her with finality, and she began her trek across the lot, moving toward the blue Subaru Outback parked at the far end.

  She wasn’t necessarily sure why she stopped. Maybe some sixth sense warned her to lift her face and check out her surroundings.

  Four red foxes stood before the back of her car, watching her with unblinking eyes.

  What the hell are they doing out in this? was her first thought, before the terrible realization struck home. Of course. They were probably affected as well.

  “Shit,” she said again as the four animals began to slowly pad across the parking lot, their attention never leaving her.

  The glint of something shiny in one of the fox’s eyes was all she needed to see, and without another thought, she spun around, making a run back to the hospital door. Her heart hammered in her chest, years of cigarette smoking and an unnatural love of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey not doing her any favors. Her breath was like fire in her lungs as the door loomed temptingly closer. From the corner of her eyes she caught more movement, multiple shapes skulking from the darkness of the woods surrounding the parking lot.

  She reached the door, grabbed the handle, and pulled.

  Locked.

  “Son of a . . . ,” she hissed, reaching into her pocket for her key ring, fingers fumbling over multiple things before finding what she was looking for. The keys came out of her pocket but dropped from her hands, clattering to the ground. As she bent to retrieve them, she caught sight of the multiple horrors that were coming her way.

  The foxes were the least of her problems now.

  It was like something out of a Disney movie filtered through Stephen King. Every kind of forest animal that called Benediction its home appeared to be coming toward her as one, like they were all friends—one big, happy family out for a stroll in the hurricane.

  And as they came closer, she saw their eyes, their right eyes glinting with a metallic sheen.

  Keys firmly in hand, she turned back to the door, searching for and finding the right key and sticking it into the lock. She turned the key and pulled upon the door, just as her lower calf exploded in pain.

  Doc Martin cried out as her leg was yanked savagely back. Managing to hold on to the door, she looked down into the face of one of the foxes, its teeth buried in her calf, eyes eerily fixed on hers.

  “Let—go!” she screamed, kicking with all her might. The fox held fast, jaws clamped, teeth embedded in the muscular flesh. As she pulled back, she felt the sickening sensation of her flesh and muscle starting to tear; the pain was excruciating.

  Keeping her body wedged in the doorway and one hand on the doorknob, she reached down with the other to slam her fist against the animal’s snout, which caused even more agony as the fox’s teeth were driven farther into the meat of her lower leg. The other animals stood watching her struggles, almost as if they’d come to some sort of consensus that the animal attacking her was doing just fine on its own.

  The fox planted its feet and began to tug.

  A combination of the animal’s strength and her own excruciating pain almost took her from the doorway, but she managed to hold on.

  Another of the foxes came forward, but she drove it back with her flailing arm and free leg.

  The fox that had her leg continued to tug, but she still held on to her place in the doorway, the hope of getting inside giving her the strength to continue to fight. It was then that she noticed the insects. At first she thought they were merely reflections in the rainwater that puddled in the parking lot, but that assumption was quickly washed away as she saw what they actually were—swarms of ants and spiders traversing the puddles to get to her.

  Bugs as well? she questioned. This was all getting to be way, way too much.

  The second fox must have decided that this was taking too long and darted in, followed by the third, to take hold of her leg, and she began to scream. She could barely fight back against one, never mind three pulling at her.

  A red haze of panic flooded through her as she began to realize that now she was indeed fighting for her life. Doc Martin reached upward toward the top of the door, ripping the keys from where they hung from the lock. She then bent forward toward the animals’ heads and jammed the longest of the keys into the animal’s strange right eye. For a moment the pressure from the fox’s bite let up, and Doc Martin attacked the others, stabbing the key into their eyes as well.

  One of the foxes released its hold, savagely shaking its head. She was able to pull her leg back and kick out, driving two of the animals away. The foxes stepped back, their heads moving strangely in the air as if trying to sense where she was. Doc Martin didn’t waste a moment before hauling herself up from the ground by the doorknob, practically throwing herself inside the building. The heavy back door swung closed against her attackers.

  She sat there, her back pressed against the wall, trying to catch her breath. Her leg was bleeding through her slacks from multiple bites, and she knew that she needed to clean the wounds and dress them right away.

  But for the moment she decided that she would just sit there and appreciate that fact that she was still alive.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Officer Kole turned the corner onto Blake Street, driving the police SUV past Henderson Insurance and Fernando Drug before taking a sharp right into the Benediction Police Department parking lot.

  Sidney was leaning forward in her seat, looking out the front windshield cleared of water by the passing wiper blades. She couldn’t help but think of the beginning of some scary movie, as the unwitting main characters arrive at the haunted house/haunted amusement park/haunted hotel/haunted insane asylum—take your pick.

  The Benediction Police Department building could have been on that list for sure. The building was constructed in the early 1900s as the official town hall but was converted into the police station sometime in the 1920s when the new town hall was built. It was a castlelike building of dark brick and granite, with copper-covered turrets oxidized a dirty emerald green. Her eyes immediately went to the multiple gargoyle downspouts protruding from around the roof, rainwater pouring from their open mouths. One of Benediction’s founding fathers had been a very religious man and had paid to have the stone creatures brought over from Rome and placed upon the building to ward off evil and bring good luck and prosperity.

  Considering what was going on, their abilities must’ve worn off.

  Officer Kole drove around to the back of the old building and brought the vehicle to a stop at the end of a concrete ramp leading up to a metal back door. There was a sedan cruiser parked in front of them and another SUV in a space in front of a closed garage door. He put the car in park and grabbed his walkie-talkie from his belt, turning it on to a high-pitched whine and crackle.

  “Does that actually work?” Sidney asked him.

  “We were able to get some signal at first, but now . . .”

  The whine grew louder, earsplittingly so. He spoke into the device, calling for his fellow officers inside the building, but there was no response.

  “Forget it, John,” Isabel said. “We’ll just take them in ourselves.”

  She pulled a ring of keys from her belt, and Officer Kole turne
d to the backseat.

  “All right, listen up,” he said, his intense stare fixing upon each of them. “When I say so, you will all exit this vehicle and walk calmly and quickly up the ramp to the door. We will be doing nothing else except getting to the door—do you all understand?”

  They all nodded, even little Amy. Sidney was going to ask about her father and Doc Martin but decided against it. She’d ask to speak to a supervisor once they got inside.

  “Ready?” Kole asked Officer Isabel. She grabbed the shotgun from the floor at her feet and nodded.

  The two officers sprang from the cruiser, then Isabel stood searching for trouble as Kole swiftly walked around the vehicle. He opened the rear door of the SUV.

  “Let’s go,” he ordered brusquely.

  One by one they slid out of the vehicle, Sidney pulling Snowy behind her, Mrs. Levesque carrying her daughter.

  “Finally,” the woman muttered as she rudely pushed past Sidney on her way up the ramp.

  Sidney glanced at Officer Kole, who was eyeing her with a cold, judgmental stare. His gaze dropped to Snowy. “I’m trusting that you know what you’re talking about,” he said, squeezing the butt of his gun as he studied the dog.

  “I know,” she said just as Snowy surged in the direction of Officer Kole, barking and snarling.

  “I warned you!” the cop yelled, pulling his gun and aiming.

  “Stop!” Sidney screamed, getting between the man’s weapon and her dog. “She’s not reacting to you—she sees something.”

  Sidney looked to the far reaches of the parking lot and for a minute thought that the pouring rain might have been playing tricks on her eyes.

  If only.

  “We need to get inside,” Sidney said urgently, tugging her dog toward the concrete ramp. She reached out and grabbed the officer’s shirtsleeve to pull him along as well.

  “What does she see?” he asked, looking off across the lot.

  One could mistake it for a combination of shadows and water flowing across the slightly uneven surfaces of the parking area, but that wasn’t it at all.

  “What is that?” Kole actually began to walk toward the shadows, only stopping when he realized that Sidney was still holding on to his arm.

  He looked at her.

  “I don’t think you want to go any closer,” she said, beginning to pull him toward the others.

  The moving shadow was flowing closer, and they could see that the solid, dark mass was made up of thousands of bodies—thousands of squirming, crawling, skittering bodies.

  He looked back, hesitating.

  “Kole, let’s go,” Isabel called out as she walked up the ramp to join the others at the metal door.

  “Do you see this?” he asked her, pointing to the advancing mass of insect life.

  “I see,” she said, putting her key in the door. “Let’s get inside.”

  Sidney, Snowy, and Kole quickly made their way up the ramp, Kole passing the others to join Isabel at the door.

  She held the door open for them, watching the parking lot beyond.

  “C’mon, guys, quick,” she said, motioning them up.

  Mrs. Levesque had put Amy down but held her hand tightly as they made their way toward the open door and safety.

  Sidney still held on to Snowy’s collar, guiding the shepherd behind Rich and Cody. She stopped for a moment and looked back over shoulder at the parking lot and the mass moving inexorably closer. Stenciling on the SUV parked by the garage briefly caught her attention, but Officer Isabel’s voice distracted her.

  “Let’s speed it up,” she commanded.

  “Sorry,” Sidney said as she rushed up behind her friends and into the building. Subconsciously little warning bells had begun to sound but were silenced as Isabel slammed the metal door closed and locked it behind them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The specimens had started to decay.

  In the tiny makeshift lab aboard the C-130 Hercules military transport plane en route to Benediction’s airport, Dr. Gregory Sayid felt his frustrations intensify.

  They’d done everything they could to preserve the remains from the two previous event scenes, but still the specimens degenerated. There was just enough left to give him a taste of the mystery, and it was leaving him voracious.

  The plane shook with turbulence, and the closer they got to Massachusetts, to the storm, the worse it got. This one was a monster, the enormity of its spiral touching most of the state, but it was what was going on in the center of the storm that concerned him most.

  “ETA about twenty minutes, Doc,” Brenda Langridge announced as she peeked around the corner of the privacy partition.

  “Thanks,” he said, carefully taking a specimen bottle from the padded holder on the table to the left of him. He stared at the contents that were practically jelly now.

  “It amazes me that that little piece of snot could be causing us so much trouble,” she said, coming to stand beside him as he opened the container, tipping the bottle so that the contents slid out onto the pad in front of him.

  “This little piece of snot, as well as multiple other pieces of snot in various sizes and states of decay,” Dr. Sayid said.

  He leaned closer to the gelatinous object, scrutinizing it yet again.

  “Why do you exist?” he asked the growth that he had taken from the brain of a monitor lizard.

  “That’s easy,” Langridge said, picking up one of his dissecting tools and proceeding to pare away the nail on one of her fingers. “To make us crazy and to give our specialized research division something to do.”

  He rested his chin on top of a closed fist.

  “What’s its purpose, though?” Sayid said. “We’ve found zero evidence of a viral component, but something has caused—this. What’s doing it, and why?”

  “Ouch!” Langridge yelped, and tossed the scalpel back onto his workstation as she stuck her bleeding finger into her mouth. “I guess that it’s just nature throwing us another curveball,” she said, taking her finger from her mouth and looking at it. “Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve encountered some naturally occurring bizarreness in this ever-changing world of ours.”

  Sayid continued to watch the extracted growth as it sat there on the tray, decaying even though it had been kept in a series of special chemicals to prevent that very thing. All they had done was slow the process down a bit.

  “The funny thing is, and it really isn’t at all humorous, but I’m hoping that you’re right.”

  He could feel her looking at him.

  “Why? What else could it possibly be?”

  He didn’t answer her because he wasn’t at all sure and didn’t feel comfortable airing his suspicions.

  A message came over the PA that it was time for them to take their seats and to buckle up for landing.

  Sayid started to put away his supplies and specimens. He hoped to have more answers very soon, either putting to bed his crazy suspicions or dragging them from the shadows into the light of day.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  There was light in the police station, an emergency generator having kicked on as soon as the power went out.

  “Hey, Kennedy!” Officer Kole bellowed as he climbed the concrete stairs to the main level, Isabel and the Levesques right behind him. “We’ve found a couple more!”

  Sidney, Rich, and Cody began to follow.

  “I wonder if the power outage erased their computer records,” Rich mused aloud. He caught Cody’s and Sidney’s confused looks and explained further. “I’ve got a few parking tickets that I haven’t gotten around to paying and, y’know, if the system got wiped . . .”

  Sidney rolled her eyes, amazed that Rich could even think about parking tickets after what they had been through. She realized then that Snowy wasn’t with them and turned to see her sniffing wildly around the base of the door.

  “C’mon, girl,” she said aloud even though the dog could not hear.

  She descended the steps and stood beside the dog
, not wanting to startle her, then leaned into her line of vision.

  “Let’s go; we can’t lag behind,” she said, making hand gestures that the dog understood. “Don’t want Officer Kole to be any more suspicious of you than he already is.”

  The dog obeyed, following her to the stairs and staying by her side as they climbed up to join Cody and Rich, who waited on the first-floor landing.

  “Did you get lost?” Rich asked.

  “Snowy took a detour,” she explained, thumping the dog’s side with the flat of her hand.

  They saw the police officers with Mrs. Levesque and Amy turn a corner up ahead and moved to catch up. But Snowy stopped short, head tilting to one side.

  “What is it, Snow?” Sidney asked her.

  The dog sniffed the air, whined, and then began to bark.

  “She smells something,” Cody said, looking down the corridor where the others had gone.

  Sidney recalled what she had seen stenciled on the SUV near the garage in the lot—K-9 UNIT—and that niggling sense of unease returned.

  “Maybe she smells the other dogs,” Sidney said.

  “What other dogs?” Cody asked.

  “The dogs used by the K-9 unit,” Sidney said just before the sounds of multiple gunshots echoed down the corridor.

  They all looked at each other, that horrible fear back again. Sidney considered turning and running back the way they had come when screams joined the gunshots, and before she even realized what she was doing, she began to run toward the sounds of danger.

  Toward the sounds of chaos, with Snowy close by her side.

  “Sid, where the hell are you . . . ?” Rich began, but let his question fade away as he too ran down the hallway, followed closely by Cody.

  Sidney rounded the corner at the end of the corridor and stopped, facing a shorter length of hallway with what looked to be the main office at its end. Officers Kole and Isabel were nowhere to be found. The smell of gunfire hung heavily in the air.

  “Where is everybody?” Rich asked as he and Cody came up alongside her.